Puzzling times

After a few minutes a boy came over and joined me, without saying anything, and we just got on with the jigsaw for a while before we started chatting. His name is Tamby and he’s 11 and speaks pretty good English. Up in Red Hill, where I work in the mornings, most of the kids can communicate in pretty decent English, but down in Masiphumele the residents speak Xhosa (the most bizarre sounding clicking language!) and the children in the primary schools there can’t speak much English until they are in the higher grades. So Tamby and I got on with our puzzle and just chatted about small things like music, films, what he does at school, etc. He asked me how often volunteers are at the library and I told him that we’re there every day of the week but that I’ll only be there again tomorrow and he said he was disappointed because he only wants to do puzzles with me. He pretty much broke my heart there and then and totally turned my day and mood around – so has saved my housemates from me being a total grump tonight!

On Sunday I went to Robben Island. It’s something I have wanted to do since I got here, but unfortunately the wind in Cape Town means the boat trips are often cancelled. Luckily Sunday’s trip went ahead and it was so worth the wait. The tours are run by former prisoners and are just fascinating. South Africa is a beautiful country but is still so divided and I think will continue to be so for a long time. Change is frustratingly slow, which is something I have also found while trying to recover from my eating disorder, as it is impossible to make big changes overnight to something so long-standing. One of the other volunteers here pointed out though that the generation of kids we are working with and helping now will be the ones that will grow up and make the changes to live in a fairer society. Sadly, they won’t all make it that far, and to believe they will is far too idealistic, but if even just a handful of the kids I have worked with out here manage to do something successful with their lives, to help change things for generations to come, then it will have been worth all of the snotty noses, bites and exploding yogurts I have been dealing with!

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Nelson Mandela